This notebook explores the variance of traits across different levels of biological organization: within colonies, among colonies, among species, and among genera. There are many possibilities for analyses, so this will probably become a rather long notebook.
First, it’s worth just looking at the distribution of traits within each species. We can do this for each trait, treating each worker (incorrectly) as an independent measurement.
Here is variance partitioning with ape::varpart().
Here is some PCA.
What traits drive differences among workers? Do they separate into clusters based on taxonomy? Relative traits are shown in red, with absolute traits in blue.
Do colony means show a similar pattern as individual workers?
Are colonies of different species more or less variable for particular traits? Or are some species or genera more or less variable overall?
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